In That Moment
by DiggyDelena
Summary: 15 years ago they made a decision, and even though they tried to move on, but even after the next decade and a half one of them really never got over it. He had to see her again-just once more, just for one moment.


He watched her from a distance. The way she swayed in the breeze, she was so beautiful, like a flower, soft as its fragile little petals, pure as the fresh, crisp air, more beautiful than a thousand stars. She could hypnotize him, the way she moved, the way she smiled, the way she glowed when she laughed, a beautiful melody singing out her soft, sweet lips when she spoke. And she didn't see him.

Her body swayed gracefully to the side as she stepped down the street. He watched her with his clear, blue eyes, captivated in her grace, her beauty, and her pure essence as an earth-bound angel. And just a simple action as walking down the sidewalk made his world just slow down. He watched it in frames, a slow progression, and life itself becoming so slow it almost stopped.

"What are you doing, Damon?"

He didn't need to turn to know the source of the voice.

"The same thing you are brother," his eyes never left her soft skin and she turned almost towards him and lit her face brightly in a smile.

"Closure, brother. Isn't this your area of expertise?"

"Don't be like this again, Damon."

"Relax, Stefan," he knew what he was doing, and he'd made this decision a long, long time ago. "I just wanted to see it with my own eyes." Stefan stood quietly by his brother. It was just the two of them now. He and his brother had almost a century and a half at odds. Now, they had to stick together just to keep themselves together.

"She's still beautiful," Damon spoke quietly. His brother's gaze was now on the same figure as his older brother: the beautiful woman that had stopped at a butcher shop and through the finger-print-stained windows could be seen twirling her hair impatiently as she awaited her purchase.

"She always was," Stefan replied back in the same tone. "We shouldn't be here Damon, someone could see us."

He didn't reply, but he heard his brother's worries, and he knew he was right, but it didn't make a difference in the moment because he'd waited too long. Damon Salvatore had waited too long to see those eyes again. He spent too many nights trying to erase that radiant smile out of his mind but being haunted by her laughter. He'd ached for too long to feel that soft, warm skin again, and lose himself in her enveloping, brown eyes.

So if he had a chance to see her again just one more time, he was going to take it. And this probably would be the last time.

It was getting too risky now, they'd spent too much time stationary, and everyone was beginning to notice the two young men who never aged. The next time Damon Salvatore would return to Mystic Falls, Elena Gilbert would no longer be alive. No one in the town would.

"Has she seen you?" Stefan asked quietly, not moving from of his feet close to his brother.

"No, she can't see us this far away." From the distance, they heard the bell chime of the butcher-shop door as she danced her graceful way out the door, completely unaware of the two young men watching her from afar. They watched her silently and she lost her focus for a moment, distracted by a friend walking past her and bumped into another man. Damon flinched. He felt it as her body came into contact with the stranger for just a second. The way her gorgeous body bounced in astonishment and shock as she registered the mass she just collided with as being another human being, the way her curls danced and twirled beautifully around her soft, soft skin as she flung her look back to the other human, to identify the stranger with who she'd just bumped into in a momentary distraction. Her gasp rang through space and the brothers' ear like a bell ring, loud, clear, so beautiful and so haunting all at once. A doomed bell that rang for two heart broken brothers who loved the same girl, and let her go all the same.

"Don't forget our decision, Damon," Stefan cautioned as he finally took a single step away. Finally, the brother's green and blue gazes met. "I'll be at the boarding house." And with that the youngest was gone. He left so silently and smoothly a human would question if he were ever there to begin with. A human, but not a vampire; not Damon, the 185-year-old shadow of a once human.

His blue eyes graced back over to where the beautiful woman had been, but his eyes searched her radiant smile, she was gone.

In the second which Stefan had silently vanished, and Damon had distracted himself, the angel which he'd been watching had made her way out of his sight back into that forbidden heaven that was her life and not his to share.

The moment was gone, and now that his empty, blue eyes glazed over the empty street, he had only the memory of that dancing angel to occupy the rest of his existence, and to heal those fifteen years he'd spent wishing he could have died for her just so he wouldn't have to live the rest of his existence with only her memories.

He stayed in his seat, watching the street for some time, the shadows of passer-byers and still structures alike stretching and reaching across pavements and cobblestones. The air was crisping, birds migrated across the sky, families reunited as they made their ways home, and she never reappeared. Damon finally stood silently, feeling after all this time that perhaps this visit wasn't a good decision at all. With n empty heart, and a lifeless existence, Damon Salvatore moved from his spot and kept his eyes low as he walked slowly across the street. The light was beginning to fade with the sun over the looming horizon. The air was chilling by the hour, not that it mattered to a vampire. He heard the whispers and he wove gracefully yet slowly through the light crowd. "Who was this stranger? He looked so familiar? Had they met him before?" Because a face like his was not one to be forgotten easily, and so the handsome vampire kept his clear blue eyes low, his dark, leather collar close to his neck, and his crisp, cool voice silent as he weaved over the cobblestone, it would be so easy to just run. If he took off now, it would be so quick the distracted masses wouldn't even notice. He would just be there and instant, and not the other. He'd done just this for a vast majority of his existence, disappearing without a trace, never to be seen again.

He was almost at the street corner now, the corner that lead to the small path between the streets of traditional homes where happy couples and warm families lived, and loved, and spent there days in blissed ignorance of the treachery of their existence. He was so lost in the closeness of his destination; he lost his sight for a moment. His distraction was mere a fraction of an instant, so brief, it was almost inexistent, even for a vampire, but in the instant of distraction, he didn't see the young, little girl run in front of him, and the instant later he stopped instantly as his legs collided with the soft cotton of a young girl's dress, and his eyes watched in horror as she bounced off the force of his feet, slowly falling backwards and towards the floor. In that instant he forgot his human façade and flew forward in his vampire speed, his hands catching the young child arms softly just before his young body crashed into the hard, dirty floor.

"Uh-oh!" The young girl cried in astonishment in big bright eyes at her blue-eyed savior. Damon Salvatore opened his mouth to reply, to forgive the innocent child for the accident but stopped when his eyes met her angelic face.

Warm, bright, brown eyes bore back into his blues. Her soft, pink skin glowed warmly like a familiar warmth. Her graceful little smile with her astonished, big brown eyes, and childish, melodic voice made his whole world suddenly freeze. She looked just like _her._

"I-I, I'm sorry!" She pleaded back with his hands still around her arms. Damon instantly released her when he realized his grasp was still intact. He opened his lips once more to speak, but the words were not his to mouth. This angel in front of him was unmistakable.

"Umm…ok, I have to go now," she started, backing away a few steps from the handsome, dark stranger. She turned on her stumbled feet, ready to run away when her big, brown eyes lit up, and her face glowed brightly in happiness, and she raised her hands in excitement.

"Momma!" She ran off around him and Damon felt everything around him suddenly ignite. He heard the young child collide with a human presence behind him, and his ears roared with the sound of such a familiar melodic voice.

"Baby, where have you been? Did you knock this nice young man over? Does your father know you ran off?" Damon was mesmerized by her voice as he slowly rose to his feet, his back still to the child and her mother he had just been watching from a distance just a few moments prior.

"Mommy, I ran into him, and I," the young child was out of breath. "I almost fell, but then, but then mommy, he _saved_ me!" Her excitement was vibrating off her excited voice, and as Damon finally turned towards the two humans, the mother was looking down at her rambunctious child, laughing at her happiness and excitement.

"Ho heroic," the mother mused finally looking up.

Her brown eyes met his blue, and the whole world vanished around him besides his frozen body, and her warm, familiar but slightly older one.

She wasn't beautiful anymore after all.

She was _breathtaking._

Her eyes starred in to his, and he felt like his body had detached back into those fifteen years past.

"_Elena, look at me," he whispered to her. His hand gently tilted her teary, pain-stricken face up to his, and her broken, brown eyes met his for the last time._

_He swallowed back roughly, and a sour, burning tear slide down his skin as his pupils dilated for the last time to her._

"_You never loved me," he started slowly. His eyes were burning and he felt like a hundred stakes being dug into his heart brutally, the muscle of his heart being pulled and torn into splinters too tiny even for toothpicks. This was going to be the hardest decision he'd ever make in his eternal existence._

"_You never loved me, Elena." He continued. "You never were friends with me. You never cared about me, and we never had a moment. We never danced as a couple and kissed on your porch. I never told you I loved you, and you never cried it back. After this moment, you will never remember my name again, you will never remember the sound of my voice again, and you will never remember anything about me again. Two years ago you never met me, and you never heard of me. You broke up with Matt, you dated new guys, but they didn't last. You partied, but you stayed respectful. You aunt died in a car accident, but you loved and took care of your little brother as best you could. You graduated with good grades, and you had a great summer in the sun. Now you're awaiting college letters, and you're going to move to the school farthest away from here and never think about it again. Maybe one day you'll come back, but you'll never remember the past two years here, and you will never remember Stefan, and you will never remember me."_

"I'm…sorry," she started slowly. Their eyes were locked, and Damon's breath was frozen in his throat, his mind and body locked in on her presence as she looked quizzically into his beautiful blue eyes. She starred, brown eyes feeling strange and strained before warming, her face pinking, her skin warming and her smile spreading as that beautiful blush made her cheeks glow.

"I'm sorry," she blushed bashfully, and he couldn't help but break a smile across his cold, dead lips. He listened to the sound of her heartbeat and she gathered herself in that slow second, and his ears were mesmerized when he didn't catch just one beat, but a very small, very faint second in the background.

"Woo, this pregnancy thing must be making me see things," she was smiling back up at his eyes. "I'm sorry, you just look so familiar…"

Finally Damon moved, shifting his weight on his feet awkwardly but very humanly.

"Do I know you?" She asked low with a smile.

He felt his world brighten, if even just in that moment.

"No," he answered with a single step back. And without another word, and nothing more than one last smile to the mother he still loved and the beautiful child he would have loved to be his, he turned and walked away, a smile on his face, and her smile in his mind.

Because she was happy, and she was healthy, and she got everything she ever wanted that he could never give her.

So he would survive.

She was worth it.

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**Thanks for reading, and feel free to check out my other TVD fanfictions. **

**Lots of Love,**

**~ Liz**


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